Investment opportunities in textile industryBlossoming [Archives:2003/631/Business & Economy]

Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
The state establishment for weaving and textile has drawn up a strategic plan for improving production of Sana'a Textile Factory. The plan aims at developing machines of the factory and improving the workers performance through increasing the volume of spending by $ 500.000 thousand. This would double the volume of production by 30,000 yards per day. The Sana'a textile factory production amounts to around 120,000 yards a day. Its products include various kinds of cloth provided to local market, hospitals and armed forces and security. The factory's production does not meet the local market demand and this situation necessitates building more factories, for Yemen consumes 75 per cent of its needs of clothes imported from abroad.
There are existing investment opportunities in textile industry where good and excellent cotton production is available in many agricultural parts of the country especially in Tehama and Lahj. The State Establishment for Textile Industry has opened in Zabid area, Hudeida cotton ginnery, producing 190-200 kg for a bale at a cost reaching to about YR 130 million with production capacity of 16 tonnes of cotton hair. The establishment also encourages farmers to increase cotton production by concluding contracts with them and offering financial support. Also contributing to this effort is the Agricultural Encouragement Fund which offers loans for easy interests to the farmers. Tehama area produces about 65 per cent of the total volume of cotton production if Yemen and it has a factory that produces around 600 tonnes of cotton production.
The establishment has built a sewing plant and has plans for expanding its production in order to meet demand of the local market for cloth. But the volume of Sana'a factory for textile remains less than the market demand and there are plans for providing opportunities of investment offered to the private sector in this field.
Yemen needs an industry for woman and men clothes industry made of wool and nylon, not only of cotton. Merchants import large quantities of excellent clothes from abroad. The Yemen fashion styles are varied and are not governed by one kind of taste. Some people wear local-made folklore clothes but the youth prefer imported foreign modern styles.
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